A Greater Yes

I love the Greek mythological story of the Sirens of the Sea – sea nymphs/ladies who would lure sailors to their deaths by shipwreck with their enchanting songs and alluring beauty that drew the ships too close to land.

Legend tells that when Odysseus came near the island where the Sirens were sitting, endeavouring to allure him and his companions, he stuffed the ears of his companions with wax, and tied himself to the mast of his vessel, until he was so far off that he could no longer hear their song.

History is littered with stories of ‘femme fatales’ – mysterious and seductive women who could ensnare lovers with their charm, leading them into dangerous or even deadly situations. They used their beauty and seductiveness to lure men who would so quickly fall under their power.

I remember as a young man I too would often be lured by beauty! I was quick to show interest in a beautiful woman without knowing anything of her character or temperament.

And I think this has been a hallmark of human history. One of our flaws is how easily we can be lured in by the beautiful, how hard we find it to say no the attractive, how our lust for things we know may pose potential danger for us often overshadows our common sense.

History is full of stories of men and women being lured into harmful (or sinful) behaviour through lust, or greed, or power. Sex, money, control are all very alluring and attractive. Yet often they lead us down the path of destruction.

Not just in our human relations, but right down to eating cakes and chocolate while trying to diet, or buying expensive new clothes when we’re trying to save. It’s why poker machine rooms have bright lights, why alcohol comes in attractive packaging, why the latest car has to ‘look good’.

It begs the question - how do you say no?

Do we do an Odysseus, and just stuff our ears, or close our eyes, or try to keep as much distance as possible from the things we know will harm us?

Jesus said, “I am the Bread of Life. The person who aligns with me hungers no more and thirsts no more, ever.” All the allurements and temptations lose their power to drag us in if we are living lives that are fully satisfied, and that’s what Jesus implies happens when we align with Him - The Way, The Truth and The Life.

The Apostle Paul said in one of his letters: ‘No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it’.

If we have a greater purpose, a faith in a higher power, a sense of fulfilment, a greater ‘yes’ - it becomes so much easier to say no.

Align with Jesus. Seek his power when faced with a ‘Siren’. Centre on a life of faith, meaning and purpose. It provides the greater yes.

 


www.salvationarmy.org.au/mornington

Solid Ground

Boating and I do not agree!

My last two experiences in boats have been disastrous.

The seal-watching experience I went on with two of my children began pleasantly enough, and I sat up near the front of the boat enjoying the calm water and blue sky as we sailed slowly through the bay. 

Then we hit the open water.

The boat began riding skywards up one side of the wave, before suddenly plunging over the other side like we were on the Big Dipper at Luna Park. Wave after huge wave. My stomach seemed to be doing cartwheels. The spray had me soaked. I managed to lurch my way from the bow of the boat back inside the cabin, where all I could do was sit on the floor and try to hold the contents of my stomach in, while my kids pointed and laughed at me. 

So I’m not sure what possessed me to say yes to a fishing trip a few months later. 

The story was similar. We departed from the jetty in the cove and all was pleasant, until we passed through the heads and into the ocean waters. We started rocking and rolling, left to right, up and down. I could feel myself turning green, and the captain must have seen it too. He had some words of advice that made a big difference: “"Look at the horizon." he said "Look back where we've come from and fix your eyes on the solid ground." He was suggesting that a cure for sea sickness was to focus on something fixed, something that wasn’t moving. Solid ground.

I tried it, and it worked, mostly. I still felt pretty queasy, but it definitely made a difference. I was still very relieved though when the captain decided to head back to calmer waters.

There can be times in life when we feel like we’re getting knocked from pillar to post. When it feels like we’re riding a rollercoaster, or being battered from every side. And I reckon the advice for seasickness also helps us get through the storms of life.

Focus on something solid. Something that doesn’t move. 

When the going gets rough in my life, my focus is firmly on Jesus. That’s my solid ground. He gives me an anchor point, a strength. I know that no matter what comes against me, Jesus and his love and his power will get me through it. I can look back at where I’ve come from, and how I have overcome obstacles in the past with some divine assistance, and it gives me confidence and assuredness for the future.

Jesus told a story about a man who built a house on sand and saw it get demolished in a storm, while another built a house on rock which survived intact. Jesus said that if we build our lives on Him, it’s like building on solid rock.

So when life gets stormy, if you fix your eyes on the teaching and promises of Jesus, you’ll find yourself holding it together through the roughest of seas that life can 'throw up'.

  
www.salvationarmy.org.au/mornington

Always and Never

Exaggeration. We’re all prone to do a bit of exaggerating from time to time. I find kids especially good at it.

I overheard a conversation recently between two kids where the words ‘always’ popped up quite a few times, as well as the word ‘never’.

“I would never do that.”

“She always does that.”

Obvious exaggeration going on.

On reflection, "always" and "never" are some of the most dangerous words to use carelessly. They almost beg people to ask, "Really? You’ve always done it correctly? You really mean you have never said that? Never, ever?”

As a writer, I’m pretty careful to avoid using them, replacing them with ‘usually’ or ‘often’ or ‘rarely’.

Yet I do love the words always and never. The alternatives seem less definitive, almost watery. Always and never hold so much optimism, or confidence. Like ‘I could always be happy’. Or ‘I could never fail’.

But sadly these words don’t live up to their promise – it’s pretty rare to find a true always or a true never.

Yet I can declare that I have found and proved one of those rarities in some of the final words of Jesus, according to Matthew’s Gospel.

Bidding farewell to his disciples, he left them with a promise; a promise not just for them but for Jesus-followers throughout the centuries. He said, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.” Implying that even though he was going in bodily form, his Spirit would be with them, and with us, always.

It was a definite ‘always’!

Further on in the Bible, in a letter to the Hebrews, the author Paul reminds them that God had made a promise: ‘I will never leave you. I will never abandon you’.

A great promise. An awesome ‘never’!

So these always and nevers should give us a good measure of confidence. We can know that whatever life is throwing at us, whether it is hard or sad or tiring or frightening, that Jesus is always with us.

And that no matter how hopeless the future may seem, or how crooked and rocky the road ahead looks, we can take comfort, strength & courage from the fact that God has promised to never leave us.

I can think of one more always and never, perhaps the best always and never of all. To do with heaven. Where the Bible tells us that we will always be in God’s very presence, and we will never be sad or unwell or distressed.

Now that’s an always and a never to look forward to.

 


www.salvationarmy.org.au/mornington

Quotes

As a regular user of Twitter, I read a lot of quotes. In fact my Twitter stream is almost bombarded daily by them. I think the nature of Twitter being restricted to 140 characters lends itself to the sharing of quotes.

One of the earliest famous quotes I can remember from my youth was when Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser said, ‘Life wasn’t meant to be easy’.

I’ve found it to be true! It’s not easy, and I don’t think it’s meant to be. There are plenty of tough times, and often bad things seem to happen in batches – as an example I lost both my mother and my mother-in-law to illness within a short space. In our family lives and work lives, we have a whole load of responsibilities and tasks that can be anything but easy. Many of the things that I have attempted I’ve failed, or been mediocre at at best.

Life is not always easy. It’s not always fun or super enjoyable.

What may not be known about Malcolm Fraser’s quote is that it bears resemblance to, and may in fact be a paraphrase of a line from George Bernard Shaw’s play ‘Back to Methuselah’ which went: "Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful”.

Another famous quote, a bit older than Mr Fraser’s, says ‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest…my yoke is easy and my burden is light’

These words of Jesus have been proved many times over by people who find the spiritual experience of God as restful, rejuvenating, and delightful.

This also is my experience since I embraced the Christian faith. Life is not easy, but there are moments and occasions and seasons that are truly delightful. Experiences and relationships that make life wonderful. I find my rest in Jesus. My burdens seem lighter when I’m praying and praising. There’s a new light in my life since I started following Jesus, a light that punctuates and overwhelms the darkness.

Writer Richard Rohr says, ‘You can bear the hardness of life and see through failure if your soul is resting in a wonderful and comforting sweetness and softness. Religious people would call this living in God.’

So if you’re finding life a real struggle, seek joy in God and peace within yourself. Rohr says: ‘seek to rest in the good, the true, and the beautiful. It will be the only resting place that will also allow you to hear and bear the darkness.’

 

www.salvationarmy.org.au/mornington

Unlikely People

Elijah was on the run. A fugitive. He’d shot his mouth off to a guy who had the power and the nastiness to kill him for it. So Elijah was in hiding, in fear of his life.

He was out in the bush, in the wild, in a hiding place he’d found near a creek. This little creek became his water supply. Food was harder to come by, at one stage he was eating meat and bread that had fallen from the beaks of crows.

Elijah couldn’t go home for fear he’d be killed. He couldn’t go anywhere near his home town. And when the creek stopped running, things were getting desperate.

He headed for a nearby town, and approached a woman out gathering firewood on the outskirts of this township. He discovered that she was a widow, with a son at home. Her livelihood was dependant on a small patch of land where she grew food. But this area had been in a long drought, and her financial situation was dire. This widow and her son were close to starvation. And here was Elijah, close to starvation himself, asking for food.

The situation seemed hopeless for everyone involved…

This is a story found in the Bible. The interesting bit is that the Bible says that it was God who told Elijah to go and give King Ahab the unpopular message that put his life in danger. It was God who told him to head into hiding in the wild. It was God who directed him to the town he went to, and to the widow he met.

Why would God do this? Send him into a situation that seemed hopeless? To the one person who was most unable to provide Elijah with assistance?

It turns out to be a wonderful story of trust and generosity. The widow used her last bit of flour and oil to make some bread. Even though she and her son were hungry, she fed this strange man of God named Elijah first, and found from that point on that her flour never ran out, her oil never ran out, she was able to keep on feeding Elijah and her son and herself for a long time.

It never ceases to amaze me how God is able to use the most unlikely people to come to the rescue, and to do the work of God in the most hopeless of situations. Think no further than Mother Teresa, or Oscar Schindler, or Martin Luther King Jnr, or Ghandi, or Nelson Mandela. Ordinary people able to extraordinary things amidst the most hopeless of situations.

Every day, all around you, God is using unlikely people, everyday ordinary people just like you, and me, to accomplish great things and bring light into darkness, to bring hope into hopelessness, to bring love into a world that is hungry for it.

It just takes a trusting heart, and a generous spirit; a resolve of kindness and mercy and justice.

And it often leads to a miracle.

www.salvationarmy.org.au/mornington

Sparking With Creativity

One of my favourite childhood shows was Mr Squiggle (showing my age) – where a puppet with a pencil for a nose would take a piece of paper with a few random lines on it, and use those lines to create an amazing drawing.

 

I was always intrigued at the creativity. Mr Squiggle had an amazing ability to making something beautiful and unexpected from something so simple and ordinary.

 

To create something means to bring something into existence.

 

And all of us, every one of us, have the ability to be creative.

Now I never used to see myself as creative at all!

If you’d seen my attempts at drawing, you would say I didn’t have an artistic bone in my body. I’m not much of a singer, or a songwriter. I can’t sculpt, can’t dance, can’t paint, can’t do anything with wood or metal or fabric or food.

 

But I’ve discovered that the sparks of creativity in me most often come out in the form of words. Poetry, speeches, magazine articles, prayers. I feel something well up inside and I need to blurt it out on a page.

 

The very first words found in the Bible are these, ‘in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

 

God Himself is an artist. The God of the Bible is a creative God.

 

And in Genesis 1: 27 it says God created humans in his own image. God is the great creator, and we are made in his image. Surely within each of us is the influence of the creator, the ability to create.

 

We live in a world where music can lift the soul, where stories can ignite the imagination, where painting and photography deepen our appreciation of colour and light and detail. The arts can make us laugh, they can make us cry, they can show us ourselves, they can inspire and delight, they can be therapy.

 

God still creates. Here on Earth God creates through the life He has created. God created, God is creating and God will create.

 

Creativity celebrates God. And you and I each have within us the sparks of creativity in all different forms.

 

So I invite you this week to do something creative: make something, write something, design something. Draw, paint, cook, record. Let your imagination lead you to the creation of something new and unique and expressive.

 

Mr Squiggle always came up with something unexpected and clever from a starting point of just a few squiggles.

 

God too can make something beautiful and amazing and unexpected from the simple and the ordinary. People’s lives can be made beautiful and amazing with a touch from the hand of God.

 

Perhaps that’s the most creative act of all.

 

www.salvationarmy.org.au/mornington

Time Keeps On Ticking

Time flies!

Well it sure seems like it does, particularly the older you get.

The weeks and months seem to fly by, and time seems to speed up the busier you are. Each year Christmas seems to approach with the speed of a freight train.

Of course it’s just an illusion. The world is still spinning and orbiting the sun at exactly the same speed that it always has. The second hand on the clock still beats out the same rhythm – tick, tock, tick, tock.

Time doesn’t fly so much as it marches. Relentlessly. Amidst the joys, despite the pain – time marches on.

 

A song my children learnt at Primary School was “My Grandfather’s Clock”, a song written way back in 1876. Some of the words are:

‘Ninety years without slumbering,

Tick, tock, tick, tock,

His life’s seconds numbering,

Tick, tock, tick, tock,

But it stopped short, never to go again

When the old man died’

 

I recently complied for myself a list of ‘Life Goals’ – things I would like to achieve or experience or have influence upon before the clock stops ticking on my life. But on reflection, this big list of challenges and experiences and places to visit is built on the assumption that I have many years left in which to do them, when really, I could fall off the perch tomorrow. Or today for that matter.

The Bible authors seemed to understand the fragility of life. In Psalm 90:12 it says, “Teach us to make the most of our time, so that we may grow in wisdom.” Grasping the reality that none of us know our future, and how much time we have left on earth, brings about a level of wisdom in our approach to living.

I love this quote I heard recently ‘the only person you need to better than is the person you were yesterday’.

How do I make the most use of my time and become a better man that I was yesterday? For me it’s about this journey of trying to become more and more like Jesus every day. Through reading about Him in the Bible, through communicating with Him through prayer, through meeting together with other fellow Jesus-followers, and through interacting with the world and its people in a way that would honour and bring pleasure to the one I follow.

And I know that if I do that successfully, I will automatically be a better person today that I was yesterday. Because I’m emulating the most perfect human being who ever lived. (No wonder – he was the Son of God!)

Ultimately I want to have made a difference in the world, and by giving love is the best way I can think of to do that. Radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing, without-prejudice love. Just like Jesus did, and does.

No matter what phase of life we’re in, it’s something we all can do. As the seconds of our life go ticking relentlessly by, may we each learn to make the most of our time, and gain a heart of wisdom, through the relentless giving of love.

www.salvationarmy.org.au/mornington